Madeleine Albright, first female secretary of state, dies of cancer at 84

According to a statement from the family of Madeleine Albright posted to her Twitter account, Albright died Wednesday at the age of 84. The statement said her death was due to cancer.

“She was surrounded by family and friends,” the family wrote in the statement. “We have lost a loving mother, grandmother, sister, aunt and friend.” The video above includes clips of State Department spokesperson Ned Price and U.S. Ambassador the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield reacting to the news.

Albright is best known for making history as the first female U.S. secretary of state. She served in the role for the last four years of the Clinton administration. At the time, she was the highest-ranking woman in the history of U.S. government. However, she was not in the line of succession for the presidency because she was not born in America.

“Madeleine Albright, born Marie Jana Korbelova, was a native of Prague who came to the United States as a refugee in 1948,” the family said in the statement. It added that Albright “rose to the heights of American of policy-making, receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012, the nation’s highest civilian honor.”

Before she was secretary of state, Albright served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations for the first four years of the Clinton administration. She played a leading role in pressing for the Clinton administration to get militarily involved in the conflict in Kosovo and toed a hard line on Cuba. She also advocated a tough policy in the case of Milosevic Yugoslav President Slobodan Milošević’s treatment of Bosnia.

“What’s the point of having this superb military you’re always talking about if we can’t use it,” Colin Powell, then the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, recalled Albright saying. Powell, who died last year, recalled in a memoir that Albright’s comments almost made him have an “aneurysm.”

Albright remained outspoken even after her time serving after America’s top diplomat. After leaving office, she criticized former President George W. Bush for using “the shock of force” rather than diplomacy in Iraq. When asked by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2007 if she approved of Bush’s proposed “surge” in U.S. troops in Iraq, she responded: “I think we need a surge in diplomacy. We are viewed in the Middle East as a colonial power and our motives are suspect.”